The Daily Sun of December 26,
2023, captioned: "Withholding allocation of councils without elected
officials" highlights the Senate's questionable move to pressure the
Federal Ministry of Finance to withhold the monthly statutory allocation to
local government councils without elections.
Rather than advising the Senate to
initiate the restructuring of the flawed federal system of government imposed
by the military regime, persistently sustained by a phalanx opposing
restructuring of the fraudulent federal arrangements, the Daily Sun editorial
board feigns ignorance of the principles of a federal system of government.
This displays a shameful exhibition of crass ignorance of governmental systems
worldwide. While they may be aware, they seem to align with the phalanx
opposing President Tinubu.
The Governors are justified in
dissolving elected local government councils and reallocating the statutory
allocation to bolster the State's development. Globally, there are only two
tiers of government: the Central government and the State (or Regional
government, as practiced in the First Republic). The Senate's advocacy for the
"Administrative and Financial Autonomy of local government council" is
hypocritical, as it ignores the universal principles of federal systems.
The so-called 1999 Constitution
should be discarded, and a new Constitution crafted by the National Conference
of ethnic nationalities, as was done before the Independence Constitution.
Chief Olanipekun, a legal luminary, rightly deems the 1999 Constitution
outright rubbish, asserting that it cannot be amended by the National Assembly.
He exposes the fraudulent preamble, stating, "We Nigerians give to us this
Constitution," when Nigerians never convened to draft a fresh Federal
Constitution, akin to the 1960 Independence Constitution later renamed the 1963
Republican Constitution, abandoned by the irrational military junta.
A new Federal Constitution,
forged by the National Conference of ethnic nationalities, is a categorical
imperative. Otherwise, the Tinubu administration will flounder, attempting to
govern a Federation with Unitary System of government principles, exhibiting
hypocrisy and a lack of seriousness in governance. Maintaining the defective
centralized security architecture, ostensibly favoring Northern Muslims, is
detrimental to the entire country. A decentralized security architecture is
imperative if Tinubu is genuinely committed to effective governance.
Navigating
Nigeria's Widespread Security Challenges
A Vanguard columnist, Owei
Lafemka, in Vanguard on December 26, 2023, made a mistake by thoughtlessly
stating that:
"The failure of the local
government system due to interference by the governors has seriously affected
security in the county."
This is one of the newspaper
columnist apologists supporting centralized security architecture, presumably
perpetuated by President Tinubu. Columnists are supposed to be well-versed in
political systems. Where did the columnist learn that the local government
council in a federal system of government is responsible for security?
This illustrates how Nigerian
newspaper columnists have sold out to transactional political activists who
advocate that "power is not served à la carte: kill, snatch ballot boxes,
rig the election, desecrate the polls, bribe the electoral umpire, and finally,
corner the 'priests in the temple of justice,' while crying 'go to court' if
you believe that the poll is rigged to outsmart you."
By Polycarp Onwubiko, Public
Policy Analyst
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